Driving up and down Utah’s desolate Route 117 with the trucker Ben Jones is an education. LULLABY ROAD (Crown, $26), James Anderson’s second novel (after “The Never-Open Desert Diner”), introduces us to more of the “desert rats, hardscrabble ranchers and other assorted exiles” who choose to live off the grid and depend on Ben’s Desert Moon Delivery Service for food and water and the occasional luxury, like soap. Some of Ben’s customers are deep thinkers like Roy Cuthbert, who suggests holding Second Amendment Days (“with a huge gun show and fast-draw competition”) to save the town of Rockmuse from sinking into the desert sands. Other, more desperate people, like Pedro, the tire man at the Stop ‘n’ Gone Truck Stop, trust him to transport a small child and a large dog in his 28-foot tractor-trailer rig. Ben is nothing if not a decent man, and Anderson rewards him with a deadly adventure and the most poetic prose this side of Salt Lake City. – https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/19/books/review/crime-perfect-nanny-leila-slimani.html